Royal Academy of Intl. Flow Cytometry Affairs

Send us Fan Mail We're meeting with the good people of Ozette - CEO and co-founder Greg Finak, and Chief Product Officer Corrie Ortega. We discussed how Ozette can support the research efforts of the various core facilities across the land through its data exploration tool Ozette Discovery, and improve the quality of flow data with better mixing using Ozette Resolve.

Send us Fan Mail It was my great pleasure to meet Dr. Oliver Burton and discuss his very impactful blog Colibri-Cytometry.com. We covered his career path, and explored many of the more popular topics covered in the blog.

Send us Fan Mail The issue I have whenever we discuss negotiating service contracts is that we just skip over the most useful leverage we have: fixing stuff on our own. But then again, there is very little training and information offered on how to do just that. It was a great pleasure to have Lisa Nicholls, James Marvin and Camille Stegen to discuss what the DIY life looks like, what's in th...

Send us Fan Mail Here it is! The debate that will settle this business of post acquisition adjustment of your unmixing matrix. Is it an appropriate thing to do? Or will applying manual compensation to your data send you to the 9th circle of hell (the one with the puppy stuck in ice)? So fine, my awesome guests Florian Mair and Rui Gardner do not come up with the final answer during this very insig...

Send us Fan Mail We live in strange days... The research field is facing a very challenging situation (born out of some very stupid decision making). In this ChUG episode, Melissa Leone - sales expert extraordinaire, VP of all things complicated, and now the very best core director in the land, helps David come up with a plan to reduce expenses by 10%, or increase revenues by 10%. Then we end up c...

Send us Fan Mail As much as I want to keep the ChUG podcast light and useful, we've entered a time where every piece of news we hear from the current administration is highly concerning. The media is discussing the stock market using stock images of people grabbing their face with their hands, we hear of NIH cuts and layoffs, and uncertainty is the only variable that is constant. I was happy...

Send us Fan Mail To Buy or to Lease? Finding funds for the purchase of flow cytometry equipment in your core facility can be challenging. In this first installment of the Tools of the Trade podcast, we discuss the leasing option offered by First American with Andrew Card and Nick Borkowski.  RAIFCA's Tools of the Trade podcast highlights lesser-known tools available to flow cytometry core fac...

Send us Fan Mail Regional flow cytometry are where it's at. This is what we have decided here at ChUG. We invited Aja Rieger to discuss the CoLD Summit, Karla Gorena to talk about FlowTex, and Daniel Vocelle to cover GLIIFCA. If you have unquestionably attended CYTO without any second look at other meetings, you've been missing out and this podcast is for you! Please note: David got pret...

Send us Fan Mail It was a pleasure to host Dr. Peter O'Toole, Director of the BioScience Technology Facility and Head of Imaging and Cytometry core at the University of York. He is also the host of the other, way more popular, flow cytometry dedicated podcast Flow Stars. We discussed all things podcasting, creating workshops and setting up meetings, and many more topics. We also discussed the...

Send us Fan Mail The Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) had its 2024 annual meeting in Minneapolis and I was asked to chair the Service Contract Session. Pro tip: if that happens to you, you need to recruit Julie Auger, Executive Director at the Salk Institute, and she'll find equally great panelists for the session. It was a pleasure to have Brooke Bean Massani, Director...

Send us Fan Mail Spatial Biology is an emerging technology that can get a heck of lot confusing for David. When David doesn't understand something, he asks people to help. Be like David. Ask Cezary and Daniel to explains things to you.

Send us Fan Mail The gang is back to discuss all kinds of things happening is Flowland! Ryan Duggan, Bert Ladd, Rebecca Bultema, and that other guy discuss which meetings look good this year, the range of ideas floating around reagents used to clean and maintain instruments, the problem of single stain controls when unmixing data, and careers outside of a flow core.

Send us Fan Mail 'What you don't know is out to kill you' had been the subtitle for the CAT Facility flow basics class for over a decade. It reminds us that the life of a flow cytometrist is filled with peril and danger. One day you're on the top of the world, thinking you know everything about spectral flow. Then some company comes out with a bunch of marketing material and da...

Send us Fan Mail We continuing our exploration of service contracts in the Flow Cytometry with none other than Ray Lannigan, formerly Vice President of Global Sales and Services at Cytek. We couldn't ask for a better guide to explain the details of service contracts form the industry point of view. Here we discuss how service contracts are priced, what kind of leverage is available to negotia...

Send us Fan Mail Ryan ran a discussion on the cell sorters available on the market on the Cytometry on Air podcast, roughly 10 years ago. It's now 2023 and we invited Dave Adams back along with Bill Eades to discuss how things look nowadays. We talked about the premature deployment of cell sorters, ultra-specialization of platforms, and planned obsolescence. We covered the most popular drople...

Send us Fan Mail We're thrilled to host Tony Leger, Director of Automation Laboratory Technology (ALT), for a discussion on instrument service in the field of Flow Cytometry. If you have frustrations regarding the cost of service contracts, or the difficulty around repairing your own instruments, this discussion should provide some great insights. We're hoping to expand the 'In the...

Send us Fan Mail We're back! We wanted to make sense of the numerous imaging flow cytometers that have hit the market over the last few years, notably the Attune CytPix and the BD FACS Discover S8. Ryan Duggan, Director Emeritus Pat Simms, Daniel Vocelle and that other guy discuss the potential use of the technology, and harp on an imaginary Image Stream Cell sorter.

Send us Fan Mail Here at ChUG in Cytometry, we aim to be the most relevant that we can be! This is why we decided to comment on events that have not happened yet! Laura Johnston, Pat Simms, Robot Ryan Duggan and David Leclerc discuss upcoming flow meetings, what's going on at ISAC, cells sorters, David is shilling for industry, and hiring new staff in SRLs. We also say goodbye to Laura who is...

Send us Fan Mail The CAT Facility lost a few instruments due to some water damage a few months ago and we turned to an Insurance Group to help us out. It's not a common situation for anyone (hopefully), so here's some thoughts on our experience and what can be done to avoid it as much as possible.

Send us Fan Mail The gang is back! Pat Simms, Laura Johnston, Ryan Duggan, and that other guy discuss the latest news in the flow cytometry world in this second edition of Chatting Around the Dumpster Fire. They talk about hiring staff, getting back to work in the COVID era, creating online content in flow, the great floods in history, the Quanteon, CYTO 2021 (it seems they didn't see much of...

Send us Fan Mail We host Monica Delay, US Manager for Technical Application Support at Cytek Biosciences, for a discussion on autofluorescence (AF) and the tools to deal with it in Spectral Flow Cytometry. We use figures to showcase some problems with AF which will be missing from this audio version of our talk. You can visit our website at Chugcytometry.com to find the video, along with a list of...

Send us Fan Mail Our guest is our very good friend James McCracken. We explore his career path from his post-doc at The University of Chicago, to becoming the Core Facility Director of the University of Louisville Diabetes and Obesity Center, to his current position as the Commercial Marketing Manager with Beckman Coulter Life Sciences. He has been deeply involved in the development of the newly r...

Send us Fan Mail Our guests this week are Kathy Daniels, Derek Davies, and Rui Gardner. You will recognize them from the work they have done in training Flow Cytometry users over the year. They have also developed an impressive amount of online content during the pandemic, including the OpenFlow Cytometry series available on YouTube. We sat down to discuss the ins and outs of online training, the...

Send us Fan Mail This is a reunion episode of kind! Our guest is Julie Auger, Executive Director of the RCFP at UCDavis, but also the architect of the Office of Shared Research Facilities at the UoC. And the co-founder of ChUG itself!! It a pleasure to host Julie as we discuss the early days of the OSRF, and the model of centralized administration for core facilities. Visit us at chugcytometry.com...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we sit with Dr. Pratip Chattopadhyay, Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Director of the Applied Immunology Core  at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, to discuss his paradigm breaking work in flow cytometry,  immunology and insights into career development for us all. Visit us at ChUGCytometry.com for more discussions.